I couldnt find a general topic about womens 7's, just seperate ones for different tournaments and a general one for 15's, so I am starting this new one.

The Dutch squad hosted Uzbekistan during a training day. They split themselves into two teams (Tulips and Windmills) each playing Uzbekistan one time and winning comfortably as you would expect. It does not say but I suppose it was the dutch national team and development team, probably mixed together into two even teams.

The Dutch women are sending what I think is a mixed national squad and developement squad to the Las Vegas tournament. There are four newcomers to the team, but maybe they are currently first choise? My guess is that the coach is trying to give more depth to the team by letting fringe players have a go. They are still clinging to the possibility of Olympic qualification. This means they will have to do well in the European grand prix.

Both Japan and China went undefeated against the Oceania teams Samoa and Papua New Guinea in the tournament. Japan beat Papua New Guinea 35-7 in the Cup semis while China beat Samoa 26-5 to reach the cup final.

Stupid system of qualification in this tournament. PNG reached the semi-finals after 1 win and 3 defeats, while Hong Kong won 3 and had only 1 defeat but missed out because it seems the organisers wanted 2 Oceania teams in the semis. So, it looks like PNG did better than HK in this tournament as they finished 4th and HK finished 5th, but HK had a 5-1 record overall, while PNG were 1-5 and HK comfortably won the matchup between the 2 teams as well.

The Canada University 7s tournament happened this weekend out in beautiful sunny Langford. Women's rugby in Canada is a CIS sanctioned sport so women here can get scholarships to schools to play rugby and the teams are directly affiliated with the schools while the men are kinda SOL for the most part, though UBC and UVic do real well for themselves. The Canada Maple Leafs took part because a team dropped out and they wanted to keep 14 teams so the schedule wouldn't be affected. Because they aren't a University team they were ineligible to win a trophy.

We had great time on the first international Women's day rugby 7s tournament in Belgrade. Beside us ( ŽRK Čelik Zenica - Bosnia and Herzegovina ), there were three more teams. The hosts, ŽRK Beograd, and one more team from Serbia, ŽRK Partizan, and Monte Negro national team.

It all started Friday afternoon with joint training, continued troughout Saturday, with a presentation in the University of Belgrade, about new olympic sport, rugby7s, and finished with the tournament on Sunday.

Beograd finished first, MNE second, Čelik third and Partizan fourth.

I was more than pleased with the results, cause we were the youngest team, and just four out of nine girls that were in the team played rugby before at all. And our captain was the best scorer. We also lost in dead time against champions Belgrade, 15-12. And girls did it all without their coach, cause men's team also had a game as a part of Regional Rugby Championship (www.rrcrugby.com) on the other stadium.

I watched quite a few matches on the livestream. A few surprises I thought - England beat Canada in the group stages.Russia were within half a minute of beating NZ in the group stages.USA beat AustraliaCanada hit the post with a conversion which would have taken their QF against NZ into extra time.

I think NZ played the best game of womens 7s I have ever seen when they beat USA 52-0 in the group stage. I think USA had the ball about 3 times in that game. 52-0 makes USA sound really bad, but they weren't - they went on to reach the final.

The top 3 spots look secure now. The 4th spot which gives automatic Olympic qualification is quite close now with USA doing well. I USA wins that 4th spot then I don't know what that does to Olympic qualifying. Will there be another NACRA team in Rio? They would be really outclassed.

The same weekend 2 development teams and an under 18 team went down the road to Gent in Belgium. The main development team won, beating Georgia 31-0 in the final. There were 2 or 3 familiar names in the squad. Elke van Meer and Jannicke Ijdens have both been regularly 1st team players. So has Nicole Kwee. I guess they were left out of the Tokyo squad to give other players more experience, rather than they have been dropped. But thats just a guess.